


Second Approaches

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-14 12:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne discuss clean energy and future plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Approaches

**Author's Note:**

> Post both Avengers and Dark Knight Rises, so spoilers for both.

Tony takes a moment out of his busy ‘shooting repulsor blasts at incoming enemy helicopters’ time to point out, “Also, my clean energy? Very rarely ends in mushroom clouds.”

“Didn’t your clean energy open a wormhole to let in an alien fleet?” Bruce asks. He tosses one of his throwing-Bats towards the man hanging off a line and swinging towards them.

“That was the Tesseract,” Tony says, “my tower was just an unfortunately convenient symbolic power source. There was considerable outside intervention.”

“Whereas my fusion reactor turned into a bomb all by itself?”

Tony shrugs. “I don’t know, Bats, maybe you need to be a little more careful with those failsafes.”

“Also,” Bruce adds, “didn’t your _other_ reactor explode too? I’m sure I saw that in the news a few years ago. Huge discharge into the sky.”

“Without exploding anything but me.” That’s a little bit of a lie, but Tony’s not going to tell Bruce _everything_. He doesn’t like to give all his secrets away. And it’s not as if he’s the only one. Tony is still pretending that he doesn’t know Bruce came here with the gorgeous brunette who is probably the reason the local gallery is now calling in their insurance experts.

Bruce says, that gravel that Tony can’t criticise because it’s not as though the Iron Man mask doesn’t distort his own voice, “I would argue that it exploding you isn’t to be encouraged but...”

Tony nods. They’re not hypocrites. A lot of other shitty things, but not hypocrites unless they need to be. “Anyway,” he says. “You heading home any time soon? International jetsetting’s all well and good but the conference circuit isn’t what it used to be. There are all these kidnapping attempts, for one thing. Plus the quality of speaker has really gone downhill.”

“Tony.”

“I mean, even before he tried to take the entire panel hostage, it was just one cliché after another. Think global act local, blue sky thinking, ask not what your country can do for you...” He’s running out of clichés. Tony normally stops listening to a speech after the first one. It’s one of the many reasons he could never go into politics.

“ _Tony_ ,” Bruce says.

“There’ve been these reports coming out of Gotham. Some man in a suit. Batman dies and people see the guy in a suit, they think it’s another immortality act. Only I’ve seen the footage and this kid is four inches and a few more square meals a day away from your size. He’s wearing a cobbled together suit that doesn’t quite fit right, and it’s got these blue bits on it which is really the most telling part because you’ve always been an ‘any colour so long as it’s black’ kind of guy.”

“It’s not me.”

“I know it’s not you, this is what I’m saying. The most popular alternative theory is that he’s your kid, which I don’t buy because I’ve known you longer than this boy can have possibly been alive and I think even for a man with your degree of paranoia that topic would have come up.”

“He’s not mine.”

“Well, he’s yours a little. He’s wearing a suit and taking down criminals in your city. He’s got grappling hooks and flash grenades which look suspiciously like the kind of non-lethal tech Lucius Fox still claims he’s not working on.”

Bruce in the suit is still until the moment he’s not. He says nothing and then, just when Tony has stopped expecting an answer, says, “I needed to leave him something.”

“You don’t think he’d have preferred it if you just didn’t leave?” Tony knows that’s not fair. He knows nothing good came from Bruce being in Gotham, and a whole lot of bad things did. It’s just that he’s seen the footage of this kid. That’s not a copycat, or a mirror-universe evil twin. That’s a legacy.

Bruce says, “He’s doing fine.” He might believe it.

Tony keeps on the guns of the helicopter, while Bruce deals with the close combat. There are still civilians in the building, which adds an unfortunate random element to the ground they need to be protecting.

“Look, I’m not saying go back and put on the cowl,” Tony says. “But you could drop by. Take him out for a burger and pass on a couple of pointers.” Not everyone has to come by the mission the way they did. Granted, pretty much everyone Tony knows in the business came at it that way or worse, but just because he hasn’t seen the other thing doesn’t mean it’s impossible. That’s the heart of it, isn’t it? The ways their fathers tried and failed - for one reason or another – to make a better world for the ones who came after.

Bruce says, “I’m not good for the city.”

“Bad shit happens everywhere. Doesn’t mean you made it happen.” 

“Not the point,” Bruce says. “It happened.”

It did. And if Tony were a better kind of person, he might say that Bruce is right to leave. In a just world, the man would deserve a break. The world is not just. There’s no way in hell the situation in Gotham – which wasn’t sweetness and light before it spent months under the control of a psychopath with a bomb – is going to be improved now without him. It needs someone, and Tony isn’t sure someone should be a lone kid with half a mask that doesn’t hide the anger in his eyes. Tony spent his whole adult life out of New York, because he spent his whole childhood there and he wanted to be a different person. Only it turns out that no matter how far you run there’s still you, and maybe it’s better to just face that. It’s better to be the one-man-weapon or the terror in the night because if someone is you that means someone else who doesn’t have to be. It also, Tony is finding out, sometimes means people who stand beside you with cleaner hands and clearer eyes, where the shadows used to be.

Tony asks, “Did they go looking for you? You, not Bat-you.”

Tony ran into a situation last year, and he was off the grid for a little while. Not as bad as his first kidnapping, but not great. He did get some exciting work done on the suit, so it wasn’t a total loss. And when he got back to New York, Steve and other-Bruce were there to meet him. Steve had taken hold of Tony’s arm and said, “We looked for you. I’m sorry we didn’t- we were looking for you.” He had said it as though Tony might have thought they hadn’t made the necessary effort. Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to Tony that they would have been looking for him at all. But this is his life now: he goes missing, and it’s not just Rhodey and Pepper who worry. He goes missing and national icons think they haven’t done enough to find him.

Bruce says, “They had other things to worry about.”

Bruce draws a line between himself and Batman that Tony has never really managed. He is Iron Man; Batman could be anyone. Batman could be this lost kid fighting in a city that’s barely breathing. Or he could be this man, wandering his way through the cities of Europe and pretending like there’s any chance he’s going to trip the switch in his head and make Bruce the real person, instead of the mask. 

He and Bruce are not good people. Tony has good people around him, people who live well and love pure. He knows that he isn’t one of them. He draws lines for himself because otherwise he wouldn’t stop. Bruce knows all about that. What he doesn’t know, maybe, is the way it helps to have those good people closer than arm’s length. It took Tony long enough to learn it.

Tony says, “They fought. The kid in the suit, those cops. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It’s nice, sometimes, I swear. Back up for when the alien invasion force hits the fan. People to go home to.”

The helicopter outside buzzes past the balcony, machine gun fire scattering in front of them. Tony isn’t worried.

There is a roar. Something huge and green drops onto the helicopter. The other Bruce in his life had been at the back of the audience at Tony’s panel, mostly to mock. He had headed after the first bunch of militants while Tony got suited up and Bat-Bruce ‘mysteriously’ disappeared. Tony had known Hulk would turn up here eventually. 

Hulk leaps off the helicopter just before it drops. He lands heavily by Tony. Tony pats his arm. “Hey, buddy.” He looks at Bruce, meeting his eyes through the cowl. “My suit doesn’t have an autopilot to fix. I flew up there, and I fell. This guy caught me. Think about it, at least.”

Tony turns to fire at someone ridiculous enough to think that Hulk is a good big target to aim at. It won’t hurt him much but he gets more pissed off than usual when they aim at his head. When Tony looks back, Bruce is gone. Tony isn’t really surprised. One of the benefits of having Batman as a friend: Tony almost always gets the last word, even if Bruce isn’t there to hear it. 

Tony looks up at Hulk. “I think they’ve surrendered. We should go and get breakfast before SHIELD descend and want a debriefing.” He leads Hulk back out towards the hotel kitchens. Other-Bruce – Tony’s Bruce – will be back soon anyway, and Tony wants to catch him up before people start asking questions about the downed helicopter. He tries to do these things over food if he can. Tony is not one for ritual or superstition, but he respects the traditions they built together.


End file.
